Fact-checking Donald Trump's claim that wind turbines kill whales

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Former US President Donald Trump has claimed that wind turbines off the coast of the US "are causing whales to die in numbers never seen before".

These claims have attracted significant attention on social media, where a clip of Mr Trump's speech has now been viewed more than nine million times.

But Mr Trump's claims are not backed up by evidence.

What is being claimed?

Speaking at a rally in South Carolina on Monday, Mr Trump suggested that "windmills" used to generate electricity are driving whales "crazy", and dead whales are washing ashore "on a weekly basis".

Some conservationists have raised concerns about whale deaths near the development of an offshore wind farm off the US east coast.

This series of strandings led some Republican lawmakers to call for a temporary halt to all development of offshore wind farms, and further research into possible links to humpback whale deaths.

 

Since then, hundreds of posts wrongly linking wind farms to whale deaths have been spreading on social media, with hundreds of thousands of views.

How many whales are dying?

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says that, since 2016, a total of 208 humpback whales have been stranded along the country's east coast.

The problem was deemed so serious that, in 2017, the US agency dubbed it an "unusual mortality event".

 

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